The Half Life

Neal Bowers

I spent an afternoon cutting you
out of old photographs, saving
the places you stood and anyone else,
sometimes salvaging myself
with your dismembered arm
around my shoulders.

Snipping carefully, I could
lift you out complete,
the scissors moving like memory;
but more often I butchered you,
scattering your dozen faces,
your hands that seemed to be everywhere.

How easy it was to move
your absence back across the years,
reducing every scene by one,
making past and present correspond,
until the world was severed, then and now,
and my half-life was whole.